The Duplass Brothers on Cyrus, Jeff Who Lives at Home, and Why They Don't Read Scripts

You've already shot your next movie, Jeff Who Lives at Home, with Jason Segel and Ed Helms. Did it cost more than Cyrus?

MARK DUPLASS: A little more.

JAY DUPLASS: The movie as a whole is a little more complex. There are some scenes in there that required some storyboarding.

What were they?

JAY DUPLASS: We can't say! Those were very critical scenes to the movie, but they were complex enough visually to where we had to create boards so that all the crew members could know what was going to happen.

MARK DUPLASS: It was a cool challenge. It was basically us growing up a bit, and we like to grow up a little bit on each movie. On the next one, we had some challenges where we had to say, "OK, this situation is inherently artificial. How do we make it feel organic?" You have to go three steps beyond. it's like that last move in the mirror where you mess your hair up a little bit.

JAY DUPLASS: Exactly. You shag it up a little.

Jason Segel and Ed Helms both come from the sitcom world, and you guys prize naturalism above all else. Did they have to break down the way they normally go for a punchline?

JAY DUPLASS: They did say that we popped their dramatic cherries, yeah. [Laughs]

MARK DUPLASS: But they know what it is we're doing.

JAY DUPLASS: They do, yeah, when they get on set. The only thing we ever do consciously is that we disobligate people from being funny. We tell them, "It's not your job to make this funny. It's only your job to be this character and to try to achieve the goals of this character."

MARK DUPLASS: We'll handle the funny.

Did you shoot that film in sequence, too?

JAY DUPLASS: Mostly.

So that's a priority for you on your movies.

MARK DUPLASS: It's a necessity. Studios don't love it, but when we explain it to them, they get it. We're still working relatively inexpensively; when we direct the next Spider-Man movie and ask to shoot it in sequence, that might be a problem.

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